


love and sunshine

by twistedsky



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"After the last of his friends die, Will’s actually almost grateful to be alone." Will's POV from the time his friends die through meeting and falling in love with Jemma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love and sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to May, who encouraged me to write Jemma/Will when I was feeling wishy-washy. 
> 
> Warnings: canonical deaths and trauma, depression, faint suicidal ideation.
> 
> All mistakes are my own.

After the last of his friends die, Will’s actually almost grateful to be alone.

He wishes they weren’t dead, but he’s also grateful that they aren’t trying to kill him anymore.

He’s not so grateful about the planet trying to kill him, but he doesn’t have much time to think about that at first.

No, at first, he’s just trying to survive.

He’s always been good on his feet, always been good at figuring things out, and those traits are coming in handy now.

Things change when he finds the tunnels.

Now, he has somewhere to hide, to be safe.

Once he’s dragged everything he can manage over to the tunnels, and sets up his own little version of a Cast Away home, all he does is sleep, hunt for food, and eat.

Then, the silence becomes deafening.

~~

He loses track of the days pretty quickly, especially after his watch breaks.

Days become weeks, and weeks become months. At least, he thinks they do. It's kind of hard to tell.

At this point, he’s not sure he still even cares how long he’s been on this strange alien planet.

He thinks about naming the planet, maybe even after himself.

After a particularly nasty scuffle that almost ends with him dead, he decides it already has a name.

This is Hell.

He’s in Hell, and he’s utterly alone except some creature that wants him dead.

He hasn’t completely stopped believing in a rescue yet.

He still has hope.

~~

He thinks a lot about Cast Away, that movie that came out the year before he’d stepped through the monolith.

It’s almost funny, you know.

Maybe he should have taken better survival skill notes, not that it would matter.

He’s figured things out, for now at least.

He’s alive.

He thinks he should probably start making up friends, especially since he’s already started talking to himself.

Maybe it would be better to talk to a damn volleyball, who knows?

He doesn’t have a volleyball, but he’s got a particularly round rock that he could name. He could even give it a personality.

Maybe that’ll keep him sane and safe inside of his own mind.

He rolls the rock around in his hands for a while, trying to come up with a name.

He names it Rocky, even though there's no one around to laugh but him, and takes him on walks.

~~

He figures out pretty soon that the sandstorms come when the creature comes. It doesn't matter which brings the other, because they both come, and both seem to want to kill him.

It's almost like this planet has it out for him, like it  _wants_ him dead.

He pulls out the map, and starts filling it in.

Some places are too dangerous to go, some places are just okay.

Most times, he tries to stay put.

This is a dangerous place.

He falls down the side of a minor crater and scrapes the crap out of his knee, and he’s bleeding pretty badly.

This is when he figures out the creature comes for blood too.

He outruns it as best as he can, and by some kind of miracle, he lives.

He gets smarter after that, and more careful.

He also discovers he’d dropped his rock in his fall.

He doesn’t go back for it. Rocky’s just going to have to be on his own for a while.

~~

He tells himself stories, stares at the stars, contemplates drawing on the cave walls, but he’s never been much of an artist.

He wasn’t much of anything before, which is why he’d joined the Air Force right out of high school, and he’d finally become someone.

He’d gotten recruited by NASA right out of the Air Force, which he'd thought had been a godsend. For the first time in his life, he’d had a chance at being something important.

He was a good pilot, and a glorified bodyguard, and maybe he could have been more.

And now he’s just stuck on this planet.

At the end of the day, he tries to hold onto the idea of a year. After that, NASA will come for him.

Time keeps passing, and he’s not sure how long it’s been since he arrived on this godforsaken planet.

He misses sunlight.

He misses showers(he’s taken far too many soapless baths on this planet), normal food, television, dogs, the sound of traffic in the city to help lull him to sleep at night.

He misses _people._

He’s running out of bullets because of his run-ins with the creature—death itself, he thinks, full of darkness and evil.

When he’s down to one, he stops shooting.

This is his way out, he tells himself.

If it gets too bad, if it gets too hard, if they don’t come from him—this is it.

~~

He can’t remember the sound of his mother’s voice.

He can remember her face, remember that homey, flowery scent she liked to wear, but he can’t remember the sound of her voice.

The only voice he knows now is his own.

~~

His high school girlfriend’s name was Clara, and as much as he’d liked her, she’d never felt like the one. So when they’d graduated, and she’d broken up with him before leaving for college, he hadn’t been too heartbroken.

He’d always assumed he had more time to find someone. He’d been young, in his early twenties. You don’t expect that you’re never going to see a person at that age.

When NASA had told them there was a chance there wouldn’t be a return trip, he hadn’t been too focused on that.

He’d been focused on the idea of being on an alien planet, on facing the impossible, on the fact that NASA said they’d _probably_ be able to get them back within a year.

Sometimes, he wonders if NASA has given up yet.

In his darkest moments, he wonders if they’d even tried.

~~

He’s tired.

He’s tired of getting up, so he does it as little as possible. He’s tired of the sound of his own voice, so he stops talking.

There’s a lot of time after that where he feels like he’s barely alive, barely existing, just wasting away into nothingness.

~~

He thinks he’s going to do it.

He’s going to pull the trigger, with that last damn bullet.

~~

He hears the scream, and the sound the body makes when it lands on the ground in one of his tunnels.

He approaches it carefully, almost like he's stalking prey.

It might be the creature, might be death coming for him.

How dare he try to escape it by himself, he thinks, it’s probably come to teach him a lesson.

Or maybe, he thinks, staring down at the woman, she doesn’t exist at all.

It, he corrects. _It_ doesn’t exist at all.

He’s hallucinating. This is some last ditch effort by his subconscious to try to convince him to stay alive, to keep fighting.

So he locks the woman up in a cage he’d once built for the creature when he’d been trying to catch it.

That had been foolish.

~~

She’s still there.

She cries out to be let free, but he can’t trust her.

Even if she’s real, there’s no telling if the darkness of the creature has gotten to her.

He has to wait.

She eats the food, that much he can see.

Then again, if he’s hallucinating, he’s sure his brain can manage to convince him of that too.

“You’re still here,” he says, half to himself.

It’s the damnedest thing.

He doesn’t know if this is his brain breaking, if the creature has actually gotten to _him_ now.

He honestly doesn’t even know how to tell.

“Of course I’m still here. Let me out of here,” the woman demands.

He ignores her.

~~

She talks to him.

He’s not sure what to do about that.

He’s not sure he remembers how to talk to people, how to handle them on a regular basis.

This time, she tells him her name. _Jemma Simmons_. Later, he swirls her name around in his mouth, saying it so many times it almost starts to sound real.

For now, she demands that he let her go.

She suggests that he’s plumping her up to eat her, and for a moment he struggles for the name of the child’s story where something similar to that happens—Hansel and Gretel, he figures out eventually.

Even if she’s a figment of his imagination, he thinks, at least she’s an interesting one.

~~

She attacks him after pretending to have been poisoned.

“Definitely real,” he whispers to himself, half-amazed.

She’s a person.

She’s _real_.

She hasn’t shown any signs of being homicidal(he'd already be dead if that were the case), but she is running off on her own, which means that could change very quickly.

He’s not alone.

He runs after her desperately, and brings her back.

He’s not sure where to start, not sure what to do.

At one point she backs away from him, and he realizes his mistake. 

You’re not supposed to stand that close to perfect strangers. It tends to make them uncomfortable.

He’s not sure whether or not to be happy. He’s not alone, but now she’s here, and this is a fate he wouldn’t wish on anyone, even a perfect stranger.

But she’s here, and she’s real, and so is he.

He’s not sure where to start, but he thinks he wants to know everything about her.

And hey, they’ve got time.

~~

He’s been on this planet for fourteen years.

Fourteen years.

He hadn’t let himself think about the time for a while, since there was no way for him to tell how much was passing.

He can’t even process what this _means_.

This is his life, and he’s not leaving it.

Eventually, he’ll have spent more time on this planet than he ever did on earth. Even though that’s several years off, he’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel about that.

~~

For the longest time, all he’s felt is tired.

Jemma changes that.

He hasn’t seen the sun in fourteen years(fourteen _years_ , he can’t help but get stuck on that), but looking at Jemma is a little like looking at sunshine. He hasn’t even known her very long, but she’s already changed everything.

More honestly, she’s like grasping onto a life raft when he’d been drowning.

She talks about Fitz constantly, some guy who was her best friend, who she still hasn’t accepted she’s never going to see again.

He feels bad for her, for both of them.

Will thinks she must really love this Fitz of hers, and that he must love her too.

Will hasn’t spent much time with her, but she seems fairly easy to love when she’s not biting your head off.

He thinks, after a time, that he and Jemma might be friends.

After all, they’re all they’ve got.

And sadly, one day she’s going to realize that.

But first, she’s got hope, she’s got _plans_.

She wants to save them both, and he isn’t foolish enough to believe that she can.

“You be the voice of doom,” she says softly. “And I’ll be the voice of hope.”

She’d be better off giving up on all of this now, and he says as much, but she doesn’t listen to him.

She’s got boundless optimism, and he’s nearly blinded by it.

He almost remembers what it’s like to believe in something—can almost remember when he’d still thought NASA might come to get him.

The faster she realizes the truth, he thinks, the less it’ll hurt.

~~

She’s kind of amazing.

It’s strange, because he hasn’t been around people in so long, he’s not entirely sure what to compare her to.

She makes him smile, and in return he tries to make her laugh.

There’s something good about being around another human person again.

He’d been so lonely, he’d forgotten what it had felt like not to be.

Slight moments—like waking up and looking across his little cave to see her in her cot, or hearing her hum under her breath or talk to Fitz—are a revelation.

Sometimes, he still wakes up expecting her to not be there, to have never been there at all.

But every day, she’s there.

Except when she’s not.

The first day that she isn’t there when he wakes up, his first feeling is resignation.

She never existed, and he’s been living in some sort of strange hallucination.

But then he sees her little work station, and realizes she simply must have gone out on a walk.

He spends the entire time she’s gone tied up in knots.

She’s his only human contact, his only comfort.

If he loses her now, he’s lost himself.

He’s gone too long without people, and he needs her to be alive, and to come back.

She returns, and he’s gruff, pretending like he barely noticed she was gone.

She’s excited because she found a good supply of food, and he listens to her prattle on about her minor adventures.

She’s still happy, still excited.

She still has hope.

If he were still capable of it, he thinks she’d make him believe.

~~

He knows the names and histories of all of her friends and family members.

She tells him stories, tells him about all the things she misses, all the people she misses.

He folds up the information and tucks it away in his mind.

If she dies, he has a new world of things to think about.

This, at least, is what he tells himself.

The truth is that he likes the sound of her voice, and likes to know things about her. He even likes her snoring, and it feels like the most normal thing in his world.

He hasn’t made a new friend in such a long time, and now he thinks he has.

He doesn’t let himself believe it’ll last, but he resolves to enjoy it for as long as he can.

~~

She wakes up crying and calling out.

Nightmares, he knows.

He’s had his fair share of them.

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think before launching himself out of bed and gently shaking her shoulder so that she’ll wake up.

“Oh, Will,” Jemma says, realizing it’s him. “I—“ she doesn’t have to explain. She wipes her eyes, and he realizes his hand is still on her shoulder.

She doesn’t seem to mind, so he leaves it there, and just keeps sitting on the edge of the cot.

It’s not exactly comfortable, but he’d stopped worrying about physical comfort a long time ago.

Though, his hand on her arm is the most physical contact he’s gotten with another human being in so long, he can feel himself melting.

Maybe, he thinks, this won’t end terribly.

Maybe he can keep her safe, and he won’t have to be alone anymore.

Maybe this will last.

~~

“I think Fitz would be a little jealous,” Jemma says lightly. “As you seem to be my best friend on this planet.”

Will doesn’t point out that he’d probably be a lot more upset for a hell of a lot more reasons, because there’s no point in that.

“I think I’m your only friend on this planet,” he says wryly. “I’m afraid you don’t have the same distinction with me.”

“Oh?” Jemma asks, raising a single, perfect eyebrow.

She’s the only person he sees, and thus hers is the only face he sees.

He’s kind of memorized it, and it feels a little strange, but he’s on a planet across the universe, almost completely alone.

He doesn’t really care about strange anymore.

He thinks he might be the jealous one—might be jealous of the love Jemma clearly has for this man halfway across the universe.

Except, he’s not.

Without a doubt, he and Jemma would both trade everything they have left in this world to be home again.

Sadly, that’s just not enough.

“Will?” Jemma says gently, and he realizes he’s been silent for too long, and he hasn’t answered the most obvious question.

“Oh yeah, good old Rocky. Haven’t seen him in a while. Wasn’t much of a talker,” he says, giving her a teasing look.

“I see,” Jemma says. “What was this ‘Rocky’ like then?”

“A rock,” he says, point blank.

Jemma sputters and laughs, not unkindly.

He smiles while she laughs, so clearly pleased.

If this is the best his life will ever be again, maybe he can live with that.

~~

She genuinely believes that she’s getting off this planet. Whether it’s because of her friends, who she honestly believes will find her, or because of her own fierce will, she intends to go home.

See the thing about Will is he stopped thinking about earth as home a while ago. 

She’s so intense that it’s frustrating sometimes.

She’s going to get let down, she’s going to give up, and it’s going to break her heart.

He doesn’t have it in him to watch that, which is why he tries to curb it.

Beyond, of course, the fact that he knows better.

He doesn’t believe, because there’s nothing to believe in.

~~

And then, there is.

There’s something to believe in.

After a dangerous walk to the no fly zone, Jemma returns alive with _actual_ hope, and he thinks the world must be tilting on its axis, because he’s feeling a little dizzy.

He’s not sure what this feeling is.

When she asks for help, he gives it to her, without hesitation.

She seems even more alive than she has for a while, and she’s so vibrant, he doesn’t want to take that from her.

~~

She’s studying something carefully one night, but getting incredibly frustrated.

“Maybe you should take a break,” he suggests, but she just glares at him.

“I need to figure this out,” she reminds him.  She looks tired, but she always forges ahead, refusing to give up. “As soon as I can, before everything changes, and I have to start all over again. And I’m—“ she sighs. “I said goodbye to Fitz, because I intend to see him soon. I won’t have enough power to do anything else. I need this to work as quickly as possible.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he says, surprising himself.

Jemma stares at him. “You almost sound optimistic,” she says softly.

“Just realistic,” he says. “I’ve seen you in action. You put your mind to something, and you figure it out.”

Jemma smiles back at him, and he tries to keep himself steady.

“I need you to believe in me,” she says. “Do you?”

“I do,” he replies, without hesitation. “But this planet—“ he sighs. “It doesn’t want to let us leave.”

Jemma shakes her head, because she thinks he’s being overdramatic.

He’s not sure he’d be able to tell if he were anyway, because he’s got nothing but her to compare himself to.

She stands up then, and wraps her arms around him in a hug.

He thinks he misses touch more than almost anything else.

~~

When she says she’s figured it out, he still has to be the pessimistic one.

She throws his own words back in his face.

This is the impossible, and there was a time when that would have made it impossible for him to resist.

He’s not entirely sure he’s that person anymore, but she makes him feel like he could be.

They travel for miles and miles, making their way to the location Jemma had determined as the next one where the portal would open.

It’s mostly uneventful, but Jemma is full of nerves and excitement.

She believes in this.

He thinks he does too.

He’s not entirely sure.

He might just believe in her, she’s sort of impossible not to.

~~

The portal closes too soon, and the bottle shatters. 

Jemma’s heartbreak feels worse than his own.

She’d made him believe, and now there’s no hope again, but part of him had _hoped_.

He’s not sure what to do now, so he falls back into his old ways, just keeps going, keeps trudging along.

Every step back to the tunnels is torture, and it’s a long walk.

He can see the pain written all over her face, but she’s so strong, and she keeps it together.

He thinks he might love her.

He tries to stay focused on the journey, on encouraging her to just keep going.

He’s not sure where the words come from, but come they do.

And when they finally get back to the tunnels, she collapses.

He holds her, because that’s all he can do.

He wants to make this easier for her—wishes he’d been just a second or two faster, that he’d gotten that bottle through.

He wishes he could give her hope now but he’s got nothing left, and everything he’d had was from her.

He strokes her back with his hand, and tries not to think of that soft, earth-shattering ‘No’ that was ripped from her when she’d realized that the bottle had , and the portal smashedhad closed.

He doesn’t want this for her.

“You were right, there’s no hope on this planet,” she says, and he wants to shake his head, to tell her no.

Instead, he frames the sides of her face with his hands, and looks deeply into her eyes.

“That’s what I used to think,” he says honestly. “Then you showed up.”

He’s trying to hide what’s in his heart, but it’s been so long. He’s not sure what she sees when she looks at him, but the next thing he knows she’s kissing him.

It’s been a long time since he’s kissed anyone, and it’s like he’s drowning, and she’s air, which is appropriate in pretty much every way possible.

~~

She squishes their cots together, so they’re side by side, and she curls up against him, her head on his chest.

This is hell, but she is heaven.

He thinks she might be his salvation, might be the thing that’s saved his life.

In another world—in _their_ world—she’d be a pretty scientist that he might have the courage to ask out, but who probably wouldn’t take him seriously. Or maybe he wouldn’t even notice her.

It’s hard to imagine not noticing Jemma.

He’d never wish this on her, never want this to be the path her life had taken.

But this is the path that brought him to her, and when her mouth is on his, or her hand is in his, it’s hard to remember a world without her.

She tells him stories, and asks him questions.

He thinks—he thinks he knows he’s in love with her, but she doesn’t say anything.

It’s enough to be in this place at this moment, still alive.

Alive, surviving.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

~~

He hates this planet.

He hates the lack of sunshine, hates the limited food choices, hates the monster that rules this planet(or, at least, the region where he and Jemma reside).

Will hates it all.

But when he wakes up to Jemma, his heart is filled with warmth, and he thinks it reminds him of what direct sunlight feels like on your skin. 

“I’ve found us sunlight,” Jemma tells him one day, happily. “It’ll be quick, just a few minutes, and we’ll have to travel quite a way for it.”

“I think I’d travel to the end of the world for sunlight,” he says, and he’s not just talking about the sun.

“Good,” she says, and she leans up and kisses him quick, and then again, because she can.

She still talks about Fitz sometimes, but it’s different now.

She thinks she’s not going back.

He knows they’re trapped here until the day they die, and he wishes he could change that.

~~

It happens fast.

There’s a portal, and then the sandstorm comes, and Will tries to keep Jemma safe, screaming at her to run for the portal.

Death wants to claim her, but he won’t let it.

He attacks, and then shoots his last bullet, and then runs.

He thinks he’s going in the direction Jemma went, but he’s not sure.

He hides between a rock formation, and then the sandstorm subsides, and he walks out to see the creature has left.

He looks down at his gun. Useless.

Then, he sees it.

The world brightens for a few brief minutes, and he lets the tears stream down his face quietly, then wipes them away.

When the light eventually fades, he’s left in the darkness, in more ways than one.

~~

Jemma’s gone.

There isn’t a body to be found and he searches for one, so he can say that definitively.

At least she’s home, eating and showering and sleeping.

At least she has the life she deserves.

He misses her—an aching pain in his chest he doesn’t know how to stop.

He tries not to think about it.

Maybe Jemma will tell his mom what happened to him. That would be nice, and kind, and so much like Jemma.

Maybe she’ll watch a movie and think about him, and this won’t have been for nothing.

Maybe she’ll marry Fitz, the great guy who found a way to save her.

Without an ounce of bitterness, he genuinely hopes she finds a way to be happy.

Will makes his way back to his home, his own little piece of hell.

This is where he belongs, it seems.

~~

He’s not sure why he keeps going, but the alternative is to stop, and maybe he doesn’t know how to do that.

There are no more easy outs, so any death would be painful, and maybe he’s got more life in him than he’d thought.

Maybe it’s the thought of Jemma, maybe she gives him strength.

Will thinks he’ll give up one day, probably soon.

He’s not quite there, but for now he’ll just keep going.

He’s a survivor, if nothing else.

He’s got a recent memory of sunlight, and he’s not just talking about those few minutes of conflicted heartbreak.

~~

She comes for him, and he wraps her up in his arms, and she buries her head against him, holding him almost as tightly as he’s holding her.

He’s not looking at anyone else, not noticing anything but her.

“It’s time to go home,” she says, her voice partially muffled against his shirt.

“I am home,” he says softly, so that just she can hear, and he’s not talking about the planet, or earth.


End file.
